Though 8,000 miles separate Minnesota from Mogadishu, connections between the people of the two nations have led law enforcement officers to work together.

Somalia's police commissioner is visiting the Twin Cities this week, meeting with local officers and learning from each other. Minnesota is home to the largest community of Somalis in the U.S.

One topic during Maj. Gen. Mohamed Sheikh Hassan's visit has been the recruitment of some Somali immigrants in the U.S. by terrorist organizations. More than 22 men have left Minnesota since 2007 to join al-Shabaab in Somalia, and roughly a dozen people have left in recent years to join jihadist groups in Syria.

If law enforcement agencies in Minnesota and Somalia can work together, "we can maybe put this to a stop," said Sgt. Waheid Siraach, who is on a one-year leave of absence from the Metro Transit Police Department, spending time in Somalia to help the police force there "get back and stand on its feet," he said.

"Somalia is a country that's recovered from civil war, its police force is starting again from scratch and it needs assistance in order to be able to accomplish the issue that's facing Somalia and here, in terms of young people being recruited by terrorist organizations," Siraach said.

In Somalia, the police force has been working to resurrect itself after a quarter-century of civil war.

"As Somalia and Mogadishu (its capital) are safer, as their police department is more professional, St.

Paul and Minneapolis and the Twin Cities and Minnesota are also safer," Metro Transit Police Chief John Harrington said Tuesday. "We're a community that may be separated by distance, but we are really one big community."

Harrington invited Hassan to Minnesota after the two met in August. A nonprofit had sponsored Harrington to go to Somalia, where he spoke about community policing.

Hamud, who heads to Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, met Tuesday with the Somali-American Police Association in Minneapolis. The group said 13 Somali-American officers work in the state, including one in St. Paul and five for the Metro Transit police.

Harrington hired the first Somali female police officer here. In Somalia, he hadn't expected to see many women working at high levels of the police forces, but he estimated one-third were females.

"It gave me greater encouragement to work to get even more women into policing and more Somali women in particular," Harrington said. "Our goal is ... to be a department that is reflective of the community and responsive to it."